Well, it happened. The Pussy Riot verdict has been announced. The girls have each been sentenced to two years in prison for performing their one-minute “punk prayer” in the Christ The Savior Cathedral to protest Russia’s fusion of church and state. “Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people,” said Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from her glass cage on the last day of the trial. “We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows.”

Watching this from inside the country, it’s certainly an eerie experience. The entire trial is a farce. It’s so bad, it’s literally embarrassing, and anybody can see that. However, the complete lack of transparency, and the fact that the girls are basically being tried for violating laws that don’t exist, just doesn’t seem to matter to a shocking number of citizens.

Truth is, not that many people were offended – at least, not at the start. However, the state-sponsored media made such a huge deal out of it – reminding us over and over that all Christians should be offended and horrified – that the prosecution actually got a lot of support from the average Russians who get all their information from television. This is the part that scares me most – people are offended because they’re told to be. People want the girls to burn, because they were told that they want the girls to burn. Backed by the criminals in charge of Russia, the Orthodox Church does as it pleases, and says whatever it wants (such as saying that nonbelievers should be confined to insane asylums), but will not tolerate any backlash.

We’re seeing a return to the oppression and control of the USSR, but this time the cult of The Great Leader is being replaced with medieval religious views. Unless you’re a conservative Orthodox Christian – and preferably a male one – you have no feelings to hurt, no rights to exercise, no opinion that deserves to be listened to. My plane out of here is in two weeks, and never before have I been so excited about a 12-hour flight.